Marching for science?
Andrea Saltelli
Centre for the Study of the Sciences and the Humanities
(SVT), University of Bergen (UIB) and
Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals (ICTA) -Universitat
Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) Masarykovy university, Joštova
10, Brno, April 19 2017
Where to find this talk: www.andreasaltelli.eu
On the march: the spirit of the time
in the house of
science
Source: The Conversation, https://theconversation.com/scientists-march-on-washington-is-a-bad-idea-heres-why-73305
1.Science is in a deep existential crisis which has ethical, epistemological, methodological and
even metaphysical dimensions
2.Likewise democracy which has with science a legitimacy arrangement
3.Science and its institutions are committed to the status quo & attempt to evade a critical reflection
4.Solutions aren’t forthcoming anytime soon 5.There are few areas of ‘Reformation’ where
science and society work together
A crisis looms over the scientific enterprise. Not a day passes
without news of retractions, failed replications, fraudulent peer reviews, or misinformed science-based policies
First thesis: Science is in a deep existential crisis which has ethical, epistemological, methodological and even metaphysical dimensions. This was neatly predicted by E. de Solla Price, Jerome R. Ravetz
and others five decades ago
de Solla Price, D.J., 1963, Little science big science, Columbia University Press.
Ravetz, J., 1971, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, Oxford University Press.
Derek J. de Solla Price
Jerome R.
Ravetz
In 1963 Derek J. de
Solla Price prophesized that Science would
reach saturation (and in the worst case
senility) under its own weight, victim of its
own success and
exponential growth (pp 1-32).
de Solla Price, D.J., 1963, Little science big science, Columbia University Press.
Derek J. de Solla Price
Science/knowledge degenerates when it becomes a commodity for Ravetz (1971), and Mirowski (2011).
Ravetz, J., 1971, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, Oxford University Press, p. 22.
Mirowski, P. 2011. Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science,
Harvard University Press. Philip
Mirowski Jerome R.
Ravetz
p.22: […] The problem of quality control in science is thus at the centre of the social
problems of the industrialized science of the present period.”
Ravetz, J., 1971, Scientific Knowledge and its Social Problems, Oxford University Press, p.22.
Jerome R.
Ravetz
In house science labs of major corporation were closed and research outsourced to universities
which … became more and more looking as profit seeking organization (technology transfer offices in every campus) … then research ended up
outsourced again to contract-based research organizations (CRO’s)…
Mirowski, P. 2011. Science-Mart: Privatizing American Science, Harvard University Press.
Philip Mirowski
John P. A.
Ioannides
The Economist runs its cover on the crisis (2013) based on a 2005 paper from J.P.
Ioannidis
J. P. A. Ioannidis, Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, PLoS Medicine, August 2005, 2(8), 696-701.
Use and abuse of metrics: from self-citation to citation cartels to citation stacking …
Richard Van Noorden, 2017, Brazilian citation scheme outed. Thomson Reuters suspends journals from its rankings for
‘citation stacking’. Nature, 27 August 2013
https://theconversation.com/science-in-crisis-from-the-sugar-scam-to-brexit-our-faith-in-experts-is-fading-65016
Thesis 2: Likewise in crisis is democracy which has with science a legitimacy arrangement
today’s post-BREXIT, post-Trump, post-truth brouhaha, the demise of expertise …
Jean- François
Lyotard
Stephen Toulmin
Thesis 3: Science and its institutions are
committed to the status quo & attempt to evade a critical reflection with:
Denial
Dismissal Diversion
Displacement
Denial (1)
2015 2016
Denial (2)
Adopted on 17th February, 2017, at symposium of American Association for the Advancement (AAAS) after 5 y gestation, hundreds of experts
involved
- No crisis
- No effect of crisis on evidence based policy - No asymmetries in the
use and availability of evidence for policy
(citizens same power as lobbyists)
2017
Dismissal? We can solve it!
“[…] measures [to] improving the transparency, reproducibility and efficiency of scientific
research”
Academic Research in the 21st Century: Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hyper- competition, Marc A. Edwards and Siddhartha Roy, ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING SCIENCE, 34(1), 2017
But …can we do it from the inside?
Academic Research in the 21st Century:
Maintaining Scientific Integrity in a Climate of Perverse Incentives and Hyper-competition, Marc A. Edwards and Siddhartha Roy,
ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING SCIENCE, 34(1), 2017
Diversion (There is a problem, and this is due to an ongoing war on science between the educated liberal left and the ignorant conservative right)
https://theconversation.com/science-wars-in-the-age-of-donald-trump-67594
Displacement (This is the post-truth era)
https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-the-post-truth-world-science-must-reform-itself-70455
Displacement (This is the post-truth era)
Was policy based on evidence before Brexit and Trump?
“Trump is not science’s problem. Science is.”
https://theconversation.com/to-tackle-the-post-truth-world-science-must-reform-itself-70455
Thesis 4: Solutions aren’t
forthcoming anytime soon, but:
Martin Luther
Johann Tetzel
Church stays to indulgencies as … Science stays to: predatory
publishers, citation cartels &
stacking, trade in authorship,
domination of corporate interests in science from sugar to GMO…]
Thesis 5: Areas of resistance and ‘Reformation’
where science and society work together -
emergence of a new polity of science, including citizen scientists and scientist-citizens
Jeffrey Beall Lois Gibbs Timothy Gowers Marc Edwards
http://scholarlyoa.com/2015/01/02/bealls-list-of-predatory-publishers- 2015/#more-4719
https://www.bu.edu/lovecanal/canal/
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0127502 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flint_water_crisis; http://flintwaterstudy.org/;
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/21/magazine/flints-water-crisis-and-the- troublemaker-scientist.html
Has science become an endeavor where attempts to fix a diseased system lead you to disgrace?
Jeffrey Beall
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/05/15/184233141/publisher-threatens-librarian- with-1-billion-lawsuit
http://retractionwatch.com/2017/01/17/bealls-list-potential-predatory-publishers-go-dark/
John and Laura Arnold
Ben Goldacre, alltrials.net Brian Nosek, the
Reproducibility Project.
John Ioannidis, Meta-research
innovation centre at
Stanford
Gary Taubes, The case against sugar
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/john-arnold-waging-war-on-bad-science/
An even newer sort of heroes?
“Bill & Melinda Gates … the world’s biggest source of charitable money for scientific endeavours ($4bn a year) […its research] must be freely available to all […and] will pay the cost of putting such research in one particular repository of freely available papers.
… offered the publishers of Science, $100,000 to make
papers published this year about Gates-sponsored research free to read from the beginning.
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan will disburse $50m to 47 local scientists on condition they made their work available as preprints.”
http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21719438-about-change-findings-medical-research-are- disseminated-too
Bill & Melinda Gates
Mark Zuckerberg & Priscilla Chan
Yoshiki Sasai
http://www.nature.com/news/stem-cell-pioneer-blamed-media-bashing-in-suicide-note-1.15715
Polanyi’s theses:
Science as a market driven by higher principles
…
Which feeds society’s thirst for self improvement
…
Science as a community of practice capable of self-governance …
https://theconversation.com/scientists-march-on-washington-is-a-bad-idea-heres- why-73305
Michal Polanyi
Today:
Science and innovation driven by imperfect markets
Society’s self improvement likewise entrusted to market forces
Science divided by practices (methodological aliens)
https://theconversation.com/scientists-march-on-washington-is-a-bad-idea-heres-why-73305
“Our activism would be better inspired by the radical 1970s-era
movements that sought to change the world by changing first science itself. They sought to provide scientific knowledge and technical
expertise to local populations and minority communities while giving those same groups a chance to shape the questions asked of science.”
https://theconversation.com/scientists-march-on-washington-is-a-bad-idea-heres-why-73305
END
Twitter:
@andreasaltelli
